1. THE FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The field of art to which this invention pertains is brick handling and transportation.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
The transportation of bricks has been largely performed by stacking of such bricks on pallets with handling of such loaded pallets and return or discard of the pallets after transport thereof. The expense of pallets and the inconvenience of their return notwithstanding has resulted in continued use of such method withstanding the availability since 1957, U.S. Pat. No. 2,804,980, of packages comprising a stack of bricks with predetermined rows with voids so that spaces are provided in such stack to receive the forks of a lift truck, as there have been looseness in the resulting packages, as recognized in U.S. Pat. No. 3,148,773 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,986,420 whereby strength of such stacks is maintained by use of transversely located bricks and notwithstanding the availability of mechanical stackers, as in U.S. Pat. No. 3,491,901, 3,480,161 and 3,471,036.
The apparatus of this invention overcomes the problems of looseness of the bands that plague the prior art and not only provides a stable package but also provides packages of uniform mechanical qualities wherein the bricks are all oriented in the same direction while the machine used therefor is compact and safe in operation and is applicable to a wide variety of sizes and shapes of concrete brick and like products.